


deep as I have been done

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-17
Updated: 2011-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:44:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"What's the first thing you remember?"</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	deep as I have been done

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [People With Disabilities Comment Fest](http://terajk.dreamwidth.org/15589.html?page=2#comments), for the prompt: _Simon Illyan and Alys Vorpatril meet old friends of Simon's he doesn't remember. Alys is awesome and Alys._

"What's the first thing you remember?" Alys asks from across the pillow.

Deadpan: "It was bright. Someone slapped me."

"Simon, please."

He thinks about it, properly. It's easier to talk about this in the dark, in bed, curled around sheets and human warmth, above the sounds of the city. "I was very young. It was during the war – and it was dark, there were a lot of power cuts, back then. I remember standing in the doorway, watching the lights come back on house by house across the valley. I must have been four, maybe five."

"More than fifty years ago," she says, thoughtfully.

He nods, wondering what she means by it.

*

 

A couple of men swing by on the other side of the street. They're happy, they're laughing, maybe they've had a couple of beers with their lunch. One of them stops and calls out, "Simon Illyan, as I live!"

He freezes. But the world around keeps moving, the traffic keeps shifting along the street, Alys is looking at him and looking across, and then the first of the men reaches them. Close-to, he's wearing the green of the service, today's scuffs not enough to hide the hard layers of polish on his boots. "Simon," he says, delightedly, and Simon has no idea who he is. "Long time no see! How have you been?"

"I don't," he begins, hurried and helpless, and then stops. Breathes, remembers what it felt like to handle crises. "I don't remember you," he says, calmly, and the explanation follows. It's not the truth. What happened wasn't classified, exactly, but ImpSec doesn't enjoy its own fallibility. It's like the truth, though, because it ends with him here, standing, not knowing what made him who he is.

"Oh," says the man. His name is Feiner. His friend's name is Terminello.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain Feiner, Captain Terminello," Alys says, speaking for the first time, taking in their stance, taking in their tabs. "Perhaps you'd tell me a little about yourselves?"

Feiner blinks, and then he can't resist her. "I'm a twice-twenty-years man," he says. "I served on the General Vorkraft, back in the day, and Simon was working for ImpSec but we lived in the same District, growing up, so we got to talking, and he would make these ironic comments with such a deadpan face. We drank together off-duty. It was a good time."

Simon remembers the General Vorkraft. Alys asks questions about it, laughs when Feiner talks about the awful food. For a minute they're any group of friends, met unexpectedly on the corner of a city street.

When they move on again Feiner calls, "Simon!" - and he turns, because in the last minute the voice has become familiar. "Hey, Simon," he says, with the sort of brotherly affection beneath it that makes Simon understand his own former self, why he chose to spend time around this man, "I'll remember for the both of us, eh? I'll send you some holos."

Simon laughs, suddenly, and nods, and keeps on going.

*

 

"What do you remember about the chip?" Alys asks. "When it was put in?"

"Not very much," he answers honestly. "I never did – it took time to start functioning properly, and the time just after I went to Ilyrica was always a little fuzzy."

"Did you want to go?"

He thinks, tries to remember. "I knew then that I had a high chance of coming back with schizophrenia. I suppose... I didn't want to."

"But you went, regardless."

He finds himself shrugging, as he always does when asked to think about it, even though he's in bed without anyone to see. "I was liege-sworn to Ezar. He wanted me to go. He wanted the technology. I was," he shrugs again, it's almost automatic, "I was his toy, I suppose. His plaything." A long pause. "That sounds almost... sexual, doesn't it? It wasn't – but it had that lack of agency, I guess. I did what I did. He held my life in the palm of his hand."

Alys sniffs, and he can clearly picture her expression even in the dark. "Liege-sworn or not, if Gregor tried to perpetrate such an atrocity now...."

He chuckles. "Progress."

*

 

Vorkosigan House glistens and gleams. The Viceroy and Vicereine are home from Sergyar, Miles is growing into his new appointment as Imperial Auditor. People are dancing in circles. He twirls to avoid them; things shift around his vision like a merry-go-round.

The world spins. It's a flashback, which they said he would have, or a personality change, which they said he could have, or it's something else that they said that he can't remember now: it's waking up, over and over, always tied down; it's having no dignity left, fighting, fighting; it's a nightmare. It's standing up in the middle of the room of strangers acutely aware that he cannot run a search inside himself any more. He's fucked and it's over.

He leans against the wall, arms folded. Alys notices him standing there and says, "Simon, you look like you need a drink."

She goes to get it for him, and it's all right. The cool of the glass in his hand is grounding. Ground glass, he thinks, used to wash up on the shores of the lake at Vorkosigan Surleau. He remembers that. It's all right.

*

 

"What do you remember about when the chip started to fail?" Alys asks, and he finds himself grinning despite himself.

"Alys, you have the strangest notion of pillow talk of anyone I've ever met."

She props her head up on her elbow and gives him a look. "If you were capable of having a serious conversation in daylight, Simon, I could try for some sweet nothings after dark."

He laughs at that. "I remember," he says after a moment, "I remember… being worried." He couldn't say about what, when, or why. "I remember… a meeting? I remember the first day. After that…" He pauses. "After that – flashes. Images." He swallows. "And you."

"Tell me more about when the lights came back on," Alys says, sharply.

"This isn't like maps and dictionaries," Simon says, tiredly into the dark. "It's my own life, Alys. You can't bring it back for me."

She's insistent. "Tell me."

He says, slowly, "I wasn't supposed to be outside. There was the sound of horses coming from the valley – I went to the door because I wanted to see them. My grandfather was calling from inside, _Simeon_. He called me that, rather than Simon; he came from old Earth Jewish stock, he said it was the right name for a child who listened. It smelled like woodsmoke and gas in the house."

"Memory," she says, so quietly he almost doesn't hear. "You remember what you heard, what you could smell."

He sighs. "Yes."

"Even before you had the chip, you had memories."

"Yes," he says.

*

 

It happens again. He thinks that must be strange, and then reasons that he has no experience; he lived mostly in ImpSec's headquarters for nearly all his adult life, he doesn't know much about the real world. He's ordering a cup of coffee from a tiny street vendor when a voice says, "Simon?" and he turns around.

She's a woman of around his own age, around his own height. She has dark red hair with grey in it, piled handsomely on her shoulders. "Simon," she says again, warmly. "I thought it was you. Oh, it's been a long, long time."

"I don't," he says, and stops. Thinks about the timbre of her voice, the way she moves. She steps towards him, pushes her hair away from her face, and there's the faintest scent of perfume. He thinks of her as a whole, without propositional content. "Hello," he says, softly, a little inanely.

She grins and takes his hand, pulls him into the little public park off the street. A gift from some Count or other to the city of Vorbarr Sultana, something in the back of his head provides. "It's so good to see you, Simon," she says. "I've thought about you often, over the years."

He's honest. He says, "After I left..."

"A long, long time ago," she says. "Oh, you were dedicated. Liege-sworn to your Emperor. Going halfway across the galaxy to get" – she frowns – "a chip in your head? Was that it? You weren't supposed to tell me much about it, even then."

He smiles. "I don't have it any more."

"Good," she says firmly. "I never thought it would be good for you."

"I had no choice," he says, with a distinct feeling he's said that before.

"Of course not. Still, I tell my girls, never get involved with a soldier. ImpSec, forget about it." She waves her hands around as she talks, warmly, intimately, and he remembers it. "I don't even know where to start with asking you about yourself, now. Are you married, Simon?"

"Not... exactly," he allows.

She laughs. "Not exactly?" she parrots, reading him instantly. "There's someone, whom you're not exactly married to. How very modern. How unlike how you were."

He allows her that, too. "That was... a long time ago."

"Yes," she says, with nothing but affection, and looks at her chrono. "I have to go, Simon. I'm glad I saw you. Don't forget me, will you?"

He watches her go, and thinks: _I'll try_. On the way home a bunch of red tulips on a flower-stall remind him of Alys. He buys them, he goes on.


End file.
